Patents?

Heritage is one of the Austin roses Hortico in Canada released and sold all over North America long before Austin was a real presence here. By the time he began patenting his roses, he couldn't patent this one (and many others) because they had already been commercially available here too long. Instead, Austin trademarked their names. That way, if you want to sell Heritage and call it Heritage, you have to pay him for the privilege. Otherwise, you have to call is AUSblush. If you look at Vintage Gardens' catalog of Austin roses, you can see quite a few others which fell into that lot.

Lilian Austin was bred forty years ago, twice as long as a plant patent runs. It wasn't patented in the US, but even if it had, the patent would have expired MANY years ago. Kim